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Saturday, September 05, 2009

More than 5000 women are victims of honor killings each year. Most of those women are Muslim, and while most of them are killed in Muslim countries-- more and more of them are being killed in Europe, Canada and America. A 2007 study by Dr. Amin Muhammad and Dr. Sujay Patel in Canada's Memorial Hospital observed that honor killing spreads when those whose who practice it emigrate to Western countries.

Honor killings however are only the final act in the drama of a Muslim woman's life. Before that she is expected to walk behind a man, to be a second class citizen, to cover herself as much as possible in order to deflect male desire and to take the blame for the sexual intentions that men have toward her. She knows that if she fails to deflect male desire, she may suffer a variety of penalties from imprisonment to death. In countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran, those penalties are imposed by courts. In countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan, they are imposed by rough tribal justice. In the West, where there is no Islamic court system or tribal courts, they are imposed by the family.

The burka, the chador, the hijab or any of the other covering garments are assigned to Muslim women to "protect" them from men, and to protect men from them. These garments are meant to cover their "Awrah", which in Arabic means nakedness, fault or defect. While for a Muslim man "Awrah" is only the swimsuit region, a Muslim woman is entirely "Awrah".

Al-Qadhi Ibn-Al-Arabi Maliki states: “And all of a woman is ‘awrah; her body, her voice, and it is not permissible for her to uncover that unless out of necessity, or need such as witnessing in court, or a disease that is affecting her body…” [Ahkam Al Quran 3/1579]

Imam Al-Qurtubi stated went even further stating; “It is forbidden for a woman to speak when non-related men are present and it is forbidden for men to hear the voice of a non-mahram woman as long as there is no need for that.”

What that means is that all of a woman is "a zone of shame" and obscene. Even the sound of her voice is a form of "nakedness" or "lewdness". Various Muslim authorities claim that this applies to even a woman's fingernails and eyes. A woman who fails to dress this way is behaving obscenely and is open to being assaulted, as the Koranic verse which orders Muslim women to cover themselves makes clear.

"O Prophet! Tell thy wives and daughters, and the believing women, that they should cast their outer garments over their persons (when abroad): that is most convenient, that they should be known (as such) and not molested." -Al-Ahzab:59 (Qur'an)

The key word here of course is "that they shall be known as such and not molested". Conversely the failure to fully cover up (a covering that Mohammed demonstrated by cloaking himself and leaving only one eye uncovered in order to see) leaves them open to being molested under the code of "she was asking for it."

In the wake of the brutal Sydney gang rapes in which the perpetrators told the victims and exchanged messages among themselves making it clear that the attacks were motivated by the girls being Australian and Christian, Australia's top Muslim cleric, the infamous Sheikh Hilaly delivered a sermon stating;

"When it comes to rape, it’s 90 percent the woman’s responsibility. Why? Because a woman owns the weapon of seduction. It’s she who takes off her clothes, shortens them, flirts, puts on make-up and powder and takes to the streets, God protect us, dallying. It’s she who shortens, raises and lowers. Then, it’s a look, a smile, a conversation, a greeting, a talk, a date, a meeting, a crime, then Long Bay jail. Then you get a judge, who has no mercy, and he gives you 65 years."

"But when it comes to this disaster, who started it? In his literature, writer al-Rafee says, if I came across a rape crime, I would discipline the man and order that the woman be jailed for life. Why would you do this, Rafee? He said because if she had not left the meat uncovered, the cat wouldn’t have snatched it."

The "uncovered meat" were girls as young as 14, whom the attackers brutalized for hours. Their crime was that they were meat, and they had left themselves uncovered by failing to wear Chadours or Hijabs to prevent themselves from being "molested".

This is the Muslim wolf that now stands growling outside the feminist door. The wolf dictates that women in any country with a sizable Muslim population have two choices, to cover up or be assaulted. By covering up the woman accepts her inferiority to the male. Refusing to do that could get her raped or killed. There is no third option within Islam. In Iraq, in Kashmir, in Pakistan; women have had acid thrown in their faces for not wearing the appropriate Muslim garb.

But why speak of countries under medieval Islamic laws, when you can speak of the "Free West". A French survey found that 77 percent of the women who wear Hijabs did so because of threats by Islamist groups. 77 percent. France. We are not speaking about some backward little Third World nation where the tribal elders decide what goes. We are speaking of Paris, the glittering city of lights, the capital of art and music. The birthplace of Republican Europe.

This is what Hijab feminism looks like in France,

More often the girls were under orders from their fathers and uncles and brothers, and even their male classmates. For the boys, transforming a bluejeaned teen-age sister into a docile and observant "Muslim" virgin was a rite de passage into authority, the fast track to becoming a man, and more important, a Muslim man.... it was also a license for violence.

Girls who did not conform were excoriated, or chased, or beaten by fanatical young men meting out "Islamic justice." Sometimes the girls were gang-raped. In 2002, an unveiled Muslim girl in the cite of Vitry-sur-Seine was burned alive by a boy she turned down.

Jane Kramer, Taking the Veil, New Yorker

Despite that 77 percent number, American feminists insist on fighting for "the right" of Muslim women in France and America to wear the veil. They might as well be fighting for the right of women to be barefoot and pregnant, since they are one and the same.

Much as they might eagerly parrot the propaganda of the Muslim Student Association, itself an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, regarding the veil being liberating, the veil is a statement of female submission and degradation. There is nothing feminist about being inferior. The hijab is part of a larger agenda to force Muslims in the West, and even non-Muslims to live under Islamic law. A law which states that women are inferior to men.

In the process apologists for Islam like Karen Armstrong or Noah Feldman misrepresent key Arabic words, for example defining "Awrah" as beauty, or "Zina" as meaning only adultery, or seizing on whatever property Sharia law allowed women to hold as feminist, while completely ignoring the larger issue that women were considered inferior by Mohammed and his men, and are considered inferior under Islamic law today. Not simply in theory, but in fact. A fact that expresses itself in the rapes, beatings and murders of women, both Muslim and non-Muslim, by Muslim men on a regular basis.

Rather than confront the threat to women posed by Islamic law, feminist authors like Naomi Wolf are instead claiming that the wolf is really a misunderstood poodle. They have tried to transform the Hijab into a statement of Muslim feminism, while completing ignoring the fact that the Hijab only exists because Islamic law views all of a woman as obscene and treats the woman's presence in the public sphere as a source of Fitna and Zina, Discord and Immorality, that incites men to do immoral things, including rape her. Under Islam the woman is a threat to men that can only be rendered safe for men by fully covering her up and keeping her apart from men as much as possible.

What does Naomi Wolf think is an urgent issue? Based on her blog, it isn't women, but Muslim men. Specifically defending the sort of Muslim men who kill women who don't wear the veil. Wolf's blog is filled with posts fulminating against Guantanamo Bay and the plight of the Taliban and assorted other Islamists imprisoned there. The same men who if given a chance would have a knife to her neck in minutes.

This spring in Pakistan's Sindh province alone, 40 honor killings took place. One woman took refuge in a police station, only to be handed over to her brother who killed her. A 14 year old girl was burned to death. Two women had acid poured on them after being raped. Two women had their noses chopped off for violating family honor. The Sindh province had been overrun by the Taliban.

Rather than writing about any of these women, Naomi Wolf instead wrote demanding to know "What Happened to Mohamed al-Hanashi?" Her article describes Mohamed al-Hanashi as "a young man" who could shed light on many crimes. Not the crimes of Islamist terrorists, but the crimes of the US in detaining in Islamist terrorists. At no point in time throughout the article does Naomi Wolf mention that Mohamed al-Hanashi was a member of the Taliban. The same Taliban which mandated complete covering for women, forbade women to be treated by male doctors or to get an education.

In April 2009, Sitara Achakzai, a leading women's rights activist in Afghanistan, was murdered by the Taliban because she supported rights for women. 3 days later, Naomi Wolf did not write about her. Instead she wrote an article claiming that the American people had "blood on their hands" over Gitmo and demanded that we hold Nuremberg Trials to determine who gave the order to "torture" captured Al Queda and Taliban terrorists in order to gain information about future attacks against America.

Unfortunately Naomi Wolf, like most modern liberal feminists had no interest in defending those women, only in defending their abusers. While women were being murdered by the Taliban, she sweated blood and tears to defend members of the Taliban. Finally in August, Naomi Wolf went to a Muslim country, put on a headscarf and described how it made her feel free. That seems like a reasonable preparation for the sort of environment that Naomi Wolf and much of the feminist movement are helping to create for women in the West.

In 1984 the Party's slogan is "Slavery is Freedom." The political use of such an idea is that it is easier to enslave people, if they believe that being enslaved makes them free. It is why every one party Communist dictatorship made sure to call themselves a "Democratic People's Republic". It is why the Muslim Brotherhood fronts understand that it will be easier to sell Westerners on subjugation to Islam, if they believe that this subjugation makes them free.

For almost a decade, Wolf and those like her, have been assailing the brave men and women who helped liberate women from the Taliban... while fighting for the Taliban. In the name of freedom of course. The freedom of those who shot up girls' schools, who threw teachers down staircases and beat women in the streets. Now the Muslim wolf has its snout thrust into half of Europe, into Australia, Canada and America. The honor killings continue to rise. Bodies continue to show up in hospitals and morgues. The bodies of the victims of Islam.

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comments:

It is indeed disturbing that several so-called 'feminist' writers are defending the repressive and sexist nature of Islam. I remember reading Wolf's first book, 'The Beauty Myth' and really enjoying it. That this author is now arguing on behalf of Islam just shows us how successful Islamic propaganda - helped along by western liberalism - has been.

Recently here in the UK the debate about the burkha was raging and one TV programme covered it in front of a live audience. It went back and forth until one woman suddenly looked at a Muslim spokesman and asked: 'Why do men never have to cover their faces?'

He fell silent, and that spoke volumes.

When I get time, I'm going to check out Ms Wolf's site. I do hope she permits comments on it...

Ms. Wolf and others like her are scared to death about the spread of Sharia law. They are being proactive by siding with Muslims now because they think that will spare them. Feminists need to realize that honorable men would protect women and not dishonorably murder them.

Wolf and the relativists make the argument that Western women have to take on the perspective of Muslim women, who are supposedly perfectly happy with all this. But for a writer who tackles the idea of male dominance in Western ideals for women, she completely drops the fact that for Muslim women this is purely the product of male dominance.

Wolf and her ilk are hypocrites pure and simple. They've bought into the Islamic PR hook, line and sinker.

Islam for its part has a twisted and sick idea of what chivalry is. The age of chivalry passed through the Middle East and underwent Islamic distortion.

Honor killings in the US should be made a federal hate crime. That way, Muslim women are in a protected class (and it's clear they need protection). Further, the sorts of Muslims prone to extreme violence and terrorism would be locked up as well.

Win-win.

A little note on liberal hypocrisy re Islam--virtually no outcries about the many gay children in Iran who are executed for crimes against Islamic morality. Where is ACT UP? All the gay rights organizations in the US?

your completely onesided views just make you seem all the more ignorant. crimes are comited everywhere and can't be labeled a christian problem a muslim problem ... you simply can't decide that every member of a group agrees with the actions of others who act in the name of that belief system. you can continue to spread your hate but you can only influence those who already agree with your views. i only hope that you will take off your blinders. there are some women living in places where hijab is mandatory but that does not mean every one of them is forced. i seriously doubt that survey which states 77% had not choice in france. most women i know choose to wear hijab on their own. it's between you and god alone and no man infact no one period has any say. that is because they can't stand before god and answer for how you lived your life so they can't decide how you live it while your alive. men who force their will are going against the teachings of islam and no one can help them when their time comes to answer for their own actions. but forcing your will on those women who choose to wear hijab won't change the ideals of men who force theirs on women who choose not to. if you don't understand that then i'll simplify it for you. two wrongs don't make a right. but it doesn't seem as though you'll take anything i say seriously. ofcourse you know better what it is like to be a muslim woman than an actual one would.

There are crimes that are random, and there are crimes that are committed because a religious belief system says they are acceptable.

Can you seriously argue that the prevalence of honor killings in Muslim countries are simply random? Can you argue that the words of the Mufti of Australia or for that matter Mohammed don't represent Islam's perspective toward women?

Since Mohammed set down the Hijab, men have been telling women what to wear and how to wear it all along.

It is murder and it is child abuse and it is anti-female and it should be recognised as such.

To 'anonymous' - go and live for a year in a Muslim theocracy. Then come back here and comment again. It is no coincidence that over 90% of terrorism is ISLAMIC terrorism. Nor is it a coincidence that human rights abuses are the most extreme in MUSLIM COUNTRIES.